Jewish film festival in Bethel

July 21, 2011 —

KAUNEONGA LAKE, NY— The Catskill Film Festival will present its first annual Jewish Film Festival on Saturday evenings at 8:30 p.m. at the the newly constructed pavilion across the street from the Fat Lady Café. The festival will start on July 23 and run weekly through August 27.

The series entry for July 23 will by the Woody Allen comedy “Radio Days,” a 1987 film set in 1940s Rockaway Beach, Queens. The film presents an affectionate look at the heyday of radio, marriage, celebrities, the war in Europe and secret decoder rings. It was nominated for two Academy Awards.

The festival’s films span a variety of genres from comedies to documentaries to dramas, all with the common element of Jewish cultural themes of various periods and worldwide locales. Other films in the series will include the documentary “Jews in Baseball,” on July 30; “American Splendor,” in which Paul Giamatti stars as a Jewish cartoonist who wrote about his life in Cleveland in comic books, on August 6; and “The Band’s Visit, a Cannes Film Festival award winner set in a small Israeli town where an Egyptian ceremonial police orchestra mistakenly winds up on August 13. Email Lbudner@mac.com.